Archive | Boating Tips

With big breezes and cold air and water, it has been an eventful few days for boaters and USCG crews on the waters of the Pacific Northwest. Coast Guard crews were involved in multiple incidences throughout the holiday weekend in Washington, responding to cases where mariners were ill prepared or, with tragic consequences, not wearing lifejackets. Late Saturday morning, the owner […]

We’re still firmly entrenched in winter, but signs of spring have recently been popping up ever so slightly around the Salish Sea. The new season isn’t here yet, of course, and strong southerlies and brisk northerlies are still bound to sweep in over the next couple months. As boaters, we obviously need to keep a keen eye out for […]

Lets look into decision making as it might apply to weather routing. I have a forecast that says the wind is going to veer by 30º overnight. Suppose if I jibe now and the wind does veer 30º by tomorrow morning I will gain. But If I jibe now and the wind does not veer 30º by […]

With winter now firmly upon us, two things are bound to happen in the coming months in the Salish Sea: low pressure systems will sweep in off the Pacific Ocean bringing strong southerlies, and brisk northerlies will push down from the Fraser River Valley. As boaters, we obviously need to keep a keen eye out […]

It’s time for the New Year’s reflection post. 2017 was the year we made the break from our comfortable middle class home and moved onto our sailboat. It was the year we cut the dock lines and began cruising full time. Many of our readers are gearing up for their own shift to a cruising […]

I spent far too much time in 2017 applying toxic marine products to my boat. On sunny, breezy summer days, it was hard to avoid feeling like the best part of the season had escaped me: respirator strapped on, I felt like Darth Vader on a lonesome death star, rather than the cruiser I longed […]

I have been a remote video camera junkie since AXIS came out with their first IP enabled cameras back in the late 1990s. Leveraging an ISDN internet connection, I was able to monitor my house and a vacation property remotely from a computer. Smartphones didn’t exist at that point, so you had to hunt down a computer […]